The $150 XBMC build - using the Celeron G550 with built-in graphics

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Atom is crap. AMD's Fusion is crap. Neither can do anything approaching acceptable HTPC duties when your content falls out of the sweet spot that is handled by the GPU. They don't have enough CPU power to be able to take over when the GPU can't decode the video. Even some content that IS handled by the GPU can result in choppy playback, too.

I never could get BBC's iPlayer (which is flash based) to work on Atom or Fusion. At all. With the Celeron and Pentium it not only works, but works in HD.

If you couldn't get an APU to work with HD content, I'd say that is user error.

Thanks for your insight, but if you actually read my threads, and the threads by many others on here and other forums, you'll see I'm not alone. It's not user error.

I've bolded the important parts of my post for the hard-of-thinking.

eh, its not worth the argument. Obviously I'm an idiot because I can get an APU to decode video, whereas you can't.

eh, its not worth the argument. Obviously I'm an idiot because I can get an APU to decode video, whereas you can't.

Not everything can be hardware accelerated. hi10p is typically the thing pulled to to illustrate this (there is zero hardware support for 10bit h.264).

If he says he couldn't get hardware accelerated flash to work, well... I've been having a lot of problems with hardware accelerated video on my Radeon 6770/Xeon X3470 system so I'm not about to disagree. Keep in mind that Flash is updated on an almost weekly basis. It's not hard to envision its hardware support failing for a few weeks.

It depends upon the underlying OS as well. GPU accelerated flash support is iffy on some platforms. Silverlight is a huge cluster, so Netflix on an HTPC pretty much requires Windows due to both Silverlight and their DRM scheme. Hi10 is a whole other kettle of fish, as there will never (and yes, I'd lay money on it) be GPU accelerated Hi10 support. There's no incentive for vendors to try and kludge it in, as it's a niche market...at the very best. ATI and nVidia are more than likely concentrating on h265 right now as that will be the Next Big Thing™.

If you're watching DVD (MPEG2 pretty low bitrate), h263, and h264 (up to and including 1080p profile 4.1), an Atom or APU will probably work just fine. Anything out of that goldilocks zone has a very real potential of causing issues.

*Edit*Shit! I just saw my homophone mistake after days of the post being up. I feel stupid now.

It depends upon the underlying OS as well. GPU accelerated flash support is iffy on some platforms. Silverlight is a huge cluster, so Netflix on an HTPC pretty much requires Windows due to both Silverlight and their DRM scheme. Hi10 is a whole other kettle of fish, as their will never (and yes, I'd lay money on it) be GPU accelerated Hi10 support. There's no incentive for vendors to try and kludge it in, as it's a niche market...at the very best. ATI and nVidia are more than likely concentrating on h265 right now as that will be the Next Big Thing™.

If you're watching DVD (MPEG2 pretty low bitrate), h263, and h264 (up to and including 1080p profile 4.1), an Atom or APU will probably work just fine. Anything out of that goldilocks zone has a very real potential of causing issues.

Top post of the thread. Exactly what I was trying to articulate, and exactly what Devin can't seem to grasp.

It depends upon the underlying OS as well. GPU accelerated flash support is iffy on some platforms. Silverlight is a huge cluster, so Netflix on an HTPC pretty much requires Windows due to both Silverlight and their DRM scheme. Hi10 is a whole other kettle of fish, as their will never (and yes, I'd lay money on it) be GPU accelerated Hi10 support. There's no incentive for vendors to try and kludge it in, as it's a niche market...at the very best. ATI and nVidia are more than likely concentrating on h265 right now as that will be the Next Big Thing™.

If you're watching DVD (MPEG2 pretty low bitrate), h263, and h264 (up to and including 1080p profile 4.1), an Atom or APU will probably work just fine. Anything out of that goldilocks zone has a very real potential of causing issues.

Top post of the thread. Exactly what I was trying to articulate, and exactly what Devin can't seem to grasp.

That makes a lot more sense then. Fusion is the entire line, E and A. E is what I consider the netbook equivilent of a processor: small, sips power, practically worthless . Fusion was the big name before they started pushing "APU", and frankly I had never even ascribed the Fusion moniker to my setup, I just stuck with A6 or Llano.

Anyway, my apologies for mistaking your posts about the E series Fusions.

N64, I don't know, but it should be fine with MAME ROMs. I think someone's already built a MAME box with an RPi, so a Celeron should be more than enough.

There such a big spread in system requirements for mame games, I was wondering if anyone had any first hand experience. I'm guessing everything up to the 3d titles of the mid 90s (ridge racer, tekken etc) would be playable (so ghosts'n'goblines, TMNT should be alright.)

I think I'm going to make the switch from WMC to xbmc and so figured I could add a gaming section. I could never get a decent library addin under media center, but the xbmc one looks pretty good so far.

I run it off a miniITX Intel board that runs off a Dell laptop PSU. It uses a 64GB SSD, has 4GB RAM (only because I had it already), in a tiny Morex 557B case.

Hi, I have a question about Morex 557. Which is the maximum height for a CPU cooler in the Morex 557 chassis?I mean the height with cpu cooler mounted, with 1 SSD mounted and the top of the case closed. Can you help me? Thank you.

Section 5.1 (starting on page 20), RCFH7-1156 (DHA-A), which is the same dimensions as the lower-performing RCFH5-1156 (DHA-B).

It does not have exact dimensions, but it has the component keep-out area which is good enough for our purposes-- which references a page or two later the maximum height above the motherboard of 46.00mm (1.81 inches), and recommends 81.30mm (3.20 inches) above the motherboard for the fan to breathe properly (so 1.4 inches extra clearance).

Section 5.1 (starting on page 20), RCFH7-1156 (DHA-A), which is the same dimensions as the lower-performing RCFH5-1156 (DHA-B).

It does not have exact dimensions, but it has the component keep-out area which is good enough for our purposes-- which references a page or two later the maximum height above the motherboard of 46.00mm (1.81 inches), and recommends 81.30mm (3.20 inches) above the motherboard for the fan to breathe properly (so 1.4 inches extra clearance).

Section 5.1 (starting on page 20), RCFH7-1156 (DHA-A), which is the same dimensions as the lower-performing RCFH5-1156 (DHA-B).

It does not have exact dimensions, but it has the component keep-out area which is good enough for our purposes-- which references a page or two later the maximum height above the motherboard of 46.00mm (1.81 inches), and recommends 81.30mm (3.20 inches) above the motherboard for the fan to breathe properly (so 1.4 inches extra clearance).

do you think I can fit a stock intel heatsink in Morex?

You know, you could always pull up the spec sheets, and determine the answer yourself. You do know how to add and subtract, correct?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Atom is crap. AMD's Fusion is crap. Neither can do anything approaching acceptable HTPC duties when your content falls out of the sweet spot that is handled by the GPU. They don't have enough CPU power to be able to take over when the GPU can't decode the video. Even some content that IS handled by the GPU can result in choppy playback, too.

I never could get BBC's iPlayer (which is flash based) to work on Atom or Fusion. At all. With the Celeron and Pentium it not only works, but works in HD.

If you couldn't get an APU to work with HD content, I'd say that is user error.

Thanks for your insight, but if you actually read my threads, and the threads by many others on here and other forums, you'll see I'm not alone. It's not user error.

I've bolded the important parts of my post for the hard-of-thinking.

I cannot believe that Fusion in general is incapable of doing this. Bobcat? Yeah, I'd buy that. Llano? Trinity? There's enough oomph there to play it, even without GPU assist.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Atom is crap. AMD's Fusion is crap. Neither can do anything approaching acceptable HTPC duties when your content falls out of the sweet spot that is handled by the GPU. They don't have enough CPU power to be able to take over when the GPU can't decode the video. Even some content that IS handled by the GPU can result in choppy playback, too.

I never could get BBC's iPlayer (which is flash based) to work on Atom or Fusion. At all. With the Celeron and Pentium it not only works, but works in HD.

If you couldn't get an APU to work with HD content, I'd say that is user error.

Thanks for your insight, but if you actually read my threads, and the threads by many others on here and other forums, you'll see I'm not alone. It's not user error.

I've bolded the important parts of my post for the hard-of-thinking.

When you say "Fusion", do you mean one of the low-power E-series chips, or a full-fledged Socket FM1/FM2 chip? Because if it's the latter, I agree, it's user error.

All of this was cleared up. He was talking about the E series chips but referred to them as "Fusion" (which is technically correct), I was talking about the A series. Both are considered Fusion, but have vastly different performance characteristics.

All of this was cleared up. He was talking about the E series chips but referred to them as "Fusion" (which is technically correct), I was talking about the A series. Both are considered Fusion, but have vastly different performance characteristics.